BIO 1306 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Convergent Evolution, Soapberry, Introduced Species
Document Summary
In reassessing his observations, darwin perceived adaption to the environment and the origin of new species as closely related processes. From studies made years after darwin"s voyage, biologists have concluded that this is what happened to the gal pagos finches. Darwin never used the word evolution in the first edition of the origin of species. The phrase descent with modification summarized darwin"s perception of the unity of life. The phrase refers to the view that all organisms are related through descent from an ancestor that lived in the remote past. In the darwinian view, the history of life is like a tree with branches representing life"s diversity. Darwin reasoned that large morphological gaps between related groups could be explained by this branching process and past extinction events. Darwin noted that humans have modified other species by selecting and breeding individuals with desired traits, a process called artificial selection. Darwin drew two inferences from two observations.
